Course Outline: This evidence course will begin with an outline and problems that will cover the basics of the entire course, in advance. The idea is to give the student a quick “knowledge transfusion” over a couple of classes that will avoid policy and concentrate on the black-letter evidence rules, with the purpose of providing an introduction, a preview, and an initial exposure that will reinforce the rest of the course. Then, we will cover the Federal Rules of Evidence, more or less in their numerical order, using the casebook. This part of the course will take roughly two hours and will conclude with a comparison of a few significant differences between the Federal Rules and the Texas Rules of Evidence. The final hour or so will consist of exercises in standard methods of offering various common kinds of evidence and simulations of evidence controversies.

First Day Assignments: Assignment for the first day of class: Read pp.97-117 of the photocopied Evidence Practice Supplement, the first half of the "Baker & Botts Evidence Outline"-- and consider the answers to the problems contained in those pages. You will get this Supplement as part of the materials you will obtain from the Copy Center.

Assignment for the second day of class: Continue reading the same Evidence Outline, through the materials at page 133, and again consider the answers to the problems.

These three hours will provide you with an overview of the Rules of Evidence: an overview of the rules and cases part of the course. Although this is not the usual method for beginning a new course, this course is usual, because it concerns a system of black-letter rules: the Rules of Evidence. The objective is to give you a basic "knowledge transfusion" about those rules. After these first three hours, we'll begin reading the casebook. The syllabus will show you the entire case-and-rule part of the course.